Over the last couple of decades, a body of theories has emerged that explains when and why people are motivated to act. Multiple disciplines have investigated the origins and consequences of motivated behavior, and have done so largely in parallel. Only recently have different disciplines, like psychology and economics, begun to consolidate their knowledge, attempting to integrate findings. The following chapter presents and discusses the most prominent approaches to motivation in the disciplines of biology, psychology, and economics...

The current study aimed to test whether the associations of body mass index, body image discrepancy, and social comparison based on physical appearance with women's psychological quality of life (QoL) would be explained by the mechanisms of body image-related experiential avoidance and patterns of uncommitted living. The sample was collected from October 2014 to March 2015 and included 737 female college students (aged between 18 and 25 years) who completed validated self-report measures. Results demonstrated that the final path model explained 43% of psychological QoL and revealed an excellent fit...

The ability to accurately perceive signals from the body has been shown to be important for physical and psychological health as well as understanding one's emotions. Despite the importance of this skill, often indexed by heartbeat perception accuracy (HBPa), little is known about its malleability. Here, we investigated whether contemplative mental practice can increase HBPa. In the context of a 9-month mental training study, the ReSource Project, two matched cohorts (n = 77 and n = 79) underwent three training modules of 3 months' duration that targeted attentional and interoceptive abilities (Presence module), socio-affective (Affect module), and socio-cognitive (Perspective module) abilities...

The brain has an essential role in maintaining a balance between energy intake and expenditure of the body. Deciphering the processes underlying the decision-making for timely feeding of appropriate amounts may improve our understanding of physiological and psychological disorders related to feeding control. Here, we identify a group of appetite-enhancing neurons in a behavioural screen for flies with increased appetite. Manipulating the activity of these neurons, which we name Taotie neurons, induces bidirectional changes in feeding motivation...

Within the literature there is an accumulating body of evidence to suggest that psychological stress may have a negative impact on wound healing. This article examines the psychoneuroimmulogy theory associated with stress and acute wound healing with reference to caring for patients with surgical wounds. The evidence reviewed in this article highlights the value of understanding individual patient need for reducing stress pre and post operatively to benefit the healing process.

A popular view in philosophy of science contends that scientific reasoning is objective to the extent that the appraisal of scientific hypotheses is not influenced by moral, political, economic, or social values, but only by the available evidence. A large body of results in the psychology of motivated-reasoning has put pressure on the empirical adequacy of this view. The present study extends this body of results by providing direct evidence that the moral offensiveness of a scientific hypothesis biases explanatory judgment along several dimensions, even when prior credence in the hypothesis is controlled for...

Transgender women experience lifelong gender dysphoria due to a gender assignment at birth that is incongruent with their gender identity. They often seek hormone therapy, with or without surgery, to improve their gender dysphoria and to better align their physical and psychological features with a more feminine gender role. Some of the desired physical changes from oestrogen and anti-androgen therapy include decreased body and facial hair, decreased muscle mass, breast growth, and redistribution of fat. Overall the risks of treatment are low, but include thromboembolism, the risk of which depends on the dose and route of oestrogen administration...

BACKGROUND: This study was initiated as part of a quality improvement audit process to create standards around goal setting with our patients to understand and improve outcomes of homeopathic treatment. METHOD: We used the Measure Yourself Medical Outcome Profile (MYMOP2) as a tool to assist clinicians in setting the treatment goals across a wide range of diagnoses and other complaints in routine clinical practice at the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital. The data collected from the MYMOP2 is of significance in its own right and the results are now reported in this paper...

OBJECTIVES: The effects of mind-body exercises on individuals with chronic illnesses have attracted increasing attention. However, little effort had been made to systematically review the effects of these mind-body exercises on individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). This review aimed to appraise the current evidence of the effects of mind-body exercises on the physiological and psychological outcomes for the PD population. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials...

Pediatric elimination disorders are common in childhood, yet psychosocial correlates are generally unclear. Given the physiological concomitants of both enuresis and encopresis, and the fact that many children with elimination disorders are initially brought to their primary care physician for treatment, medical evaluation and management are crucial and may serve as the first-line treatment approach. Scientific investigation on psychological and behavioral interventions has progressed over the past couple of decades, resulting in the identification of effective treatments for enuresis and encopresis...

OBJECTIVES: Meditation has been shown to have physical, cognitive, and psychological health benefits that can be used to promote healthy aging. However, the common and specific mechanisms of response remain elusive due to the diverse nature of mind-body practices. METHODS: In this review, we aim to compare the neural circuits implicated in focused-attention meditative practices that focus on present-moment awareness to those involved in active-type meditative practices (e...

Understanding infant development is one of the great scientific challenges of contemporary science. In addressing this challenge, robots have proven useful as they allow experimenters to model the developing brain and body and understand the processes by which new patterns emerge in sensorimotor, cognitive, and social domains. Robotics also complements traditional experimental methods in psychology and neuroscience, where only a few variables can be studied at the same time. Moreover, work with robots has enabled researchers to systematically explore the role of the body in shaping the development of skill...

This article explores the embodied compositions of professionalism in the context of the counselling psychology profession in Russia. Specifically, we develop an embodied intersectionality framework for theorizing compositions of professionalism, which allows us to explain how multiple embodied categories of difference intersect and are relationally co-constitutive in producing credible professionals, and, importantly, how these intersections are contingent on intercorporeal encounters that take place in localized professional settings...

INTRODUCTION: Obesity is a growing epidemic fuelled by unhealthy behaviours and associated with significant comorbidities and financial costs. While behavioural interventions produce clinically meaningful weight loss, weight loss maintenance is challenging. This may partially be due to failure to target stress and emotional reactivity. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) reduces stress and emotional reactivity and may be a useful tool for behaviour change maintenance. This study seeks to provide a mechanistic understanding for clinical trials of the benefits of MBSR for weight loss maintenance by examining changes in functional connectivity (FC) and the association of these changes with clinical outcomes...

Binge eating disorder (BED) is associated with high levels of obesity and psychological suffering, but little is known about 1) the distribution of features of BED in the general population and 2) their consequences for weight development and psychological distress in young adulthood. We investigated the prevalence of features of BED and their association with body mass index (BMI) and psychological distress among men (n = 2423) and women (n = 2825) from the longitudinal community-based FinnTwin16 cohort (born 1975-1979)...

OBJECTIVES: Gait speed limitations can remain significant issues after a total knee arthroplasty (TKA) but their associated factors are not well understood. This study aimed to identify the factors associated with acute gait speed recovery post-TKA. METHODS: We performed a prospective longitudinal study of 1765 patients who underwent primary TKA between July 2013 and July 2015. At 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks postsurgery, fast gait speed was measured. The factors associated with gait speed over time since TKA were identified using multivariable generalized least squares modeling...

OBJECTIVE: A World Health Organization (WHO) field study conducted in five countries assessed proposals for Bodily Stress Syndrome (BSS) and Health Anxiety (HA) for the Primary Health Care Version of ICD-11. BSS requires multiple somatic symptoms not caused by known physical pathology and associated with distress or dysfunction. HA involves persistent, intrusive fears of having an illness or intense preoccupation with and misinterpretation of bodily sensations. This study examined how the proposed descriptions for BSS and HA corresponded to what was observed by working primary care physicians (PCPs) in participating countries, and the relationship of BSS and HA to depressive and anxiety disorders and to disability...